Electronic mail to many mobile devices such as cellular telephones, “smart” cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (“PDAs”), and notebook computers, in the prior art, have typically required a user to first initiate a communication session with the service provider. Following establishment of the session, the user may then query or otherwise determine whether any email is available for wireless downloading to the mobile device and, if so, request the download (i.e., thereby performing a “pull” operation).
These various mobile devices, such as a typical cellular phone, are limited to such pull operations for downloading email or other information, and do not have other or additional capabilities. Such limitations are due to hardware, software, or both hardware and software. In addition, the infrastructure provided by the service provider is also limited, due to either the various protocols utilized (e.g., Advanced Mobile Phone System (“AMPS”), Code Division Multiple Access (“CDMA”), Global System for Mobile (“GSM”)) or to limited bandwidth for a given service area. To determine whether email is available throughout a day, a user must repeatedly initiate such wireless communication sessions, regardless of whether email is, in fact, available for downloading. Not only is such an activity a waste of the user's time and effort when no email is available, such repeated query sessions also drain and waste precious battery capacity, and utilize limited and potentially expensive airtime. In addition, when email is available, the user's receipt of the email typically has been delayed until the user, in fact, initiates the communication session and performs the query. From the perspective of the service provider, such repeated query sessions may also be a waste of available bandwidth and service capacity.
As an alternative, service providers may provide a dedicated infrastructure to automatically send all email to specialized mobile devices, such as the Blackberry devices provided by Research In Motion, which have the capability and are configured to automatically receive all email without such a prior query session (i.e., the devices and service provider have always on “push” technology). Such devices, however, are significantly more complicated and expensive than typical mobile telephones and, in addition, require support from a specialized infrastructure. This push technology is not compatible with many, if not most, current and legacy cellular telephones.
As a consequence, a need remains for a method, apparatus and system to provide a simulated push operation of email to these devices which are capable of only pull operations, using a wireless transmission infrastructure which does not have such separate push capability or which is otherwise limited by bandwidth or service capacity.